Slumrat Rising

Chapter 116: To Lead a Devoted Life

Etenesh launched herself at Alemu as the Seraphim’s chiming cry echoed off the stands. The crowds roared and cheered as the long feathers on her belt and crown flew with the speed of her attack.

Alemu froze for a half second in shock- he had drawn himself up like he wanted to say something. Etenesh wasn’t interested. He quickly spun the hoop on his left wrist, snapping out a quick shield.

Etenesh’s copper flail slashed at the shield, raising a shower of sparks but unable to reach his face. He barely got it up in time.

Etenesh didn’t let up. She constantly moved and attacked, forcing Alemu to shift and keep the shield between them as they both quickly chanted spells. Alemu’s wand wasn’t suitable for counterattacking, but his spell was shorter.

With a hoarse shout, the wand transformed into a golden spear. A moment later, it started sending spikes of golden light at Etenesh. She had to break off her attack and focus on parrying away the spikes- the copper strands of her flail whipping back and forth in front of her as she knocked them aside. The spikes made a tearing noise as they ripped through the air, shattering into a cloud of brilliant energy when they smashed into the Seraphim’s shield.

Etenesh twisted her body with a dancer’s grace. Her casting never slowed. Dodging and parrying the spikes, her left hand drew ghostly white symbols in the air. She cried out and the formation sank into the ground. They pushed back and forth a moment longer, Etenesh seemingly content to parry and Alemu more than happy to attack.

Etenesh made a sudden lunge. Alemu backpedaled, keeping the shield and spear between them. His foot went out from under him. The hard-pack earth of the pitch had turned flour soft beneath him. Etenesh feinted left and rushed right, her next spell already forming. Alemu wasn’t waiting around for it.

The golden spear traced its own symbols, sun-bright, in the air. Alemu scrabbled to get his feet under him in the loose powder. He couldn’t turn quite fast enough. Etenesh darted in, copper reeds reaching for Alemu’s handsome face. Alemu grunted, and a bronze helmet snapped into being around his head. The copper flail raised a shower of sparks as they skidded harmlessly across.

A sun-bright rune formed; a tearing edge of light was born. Etenesh tried to dodge, but the spell caught her side, scoring a long burn across her strong waist. She bit down on a scream.

First blood to Alemu. But it cost him a charm to do it. The helmet faded. Snarling, Alemu got his feet under him while Etenesh was distracted by the wound.

“Siphios is an ancient legacy! There is no place for your kind here, Te’mushd!” He drove more power into the sun-bright rune. Another searing cut of light came, ready to split Etenesh in two.

She grinned, spinning her flail, its suddenly glowing enchantments making copper traceries between them. The light struck, quick as blinking but was caught in the copper net. Some seemed to flow into Etenesh. The rest spun ‘round her. Twisted to a point. Then smashed back into Alemu’s shield.

“I am deaf to the words of the evil ones. The slanderers, the blasphemers, the seducers. Better that I had no ears to hear. Better that they had no mouth to speak,” she declared.

Etenesh’s feet kicked up plumes of sand as she chased the returning light. The black feathers on her head and belt fluttered behind her as though she were about to take flight.

The pitch was visibly turning to powder now. No longer confined to the area under Alemu, it spread to the boundaries of the Seraphim’s shield. Faintly, one could see the angelic ward start to ripple.

Alemu’s shield shattered, with Etenesh coming in behind. Her flail whipped out again, only partially blocked by the golden spear. Some of the reeds reached Alemu, slicing across his arm. He cursed and used another charm. A dome of fire seared the air between them. Alemu quickly chanted, and the hoop talisman on his wrist reformed the shield.

When the dome of fire dropped, Alemu stood proud. The sleeve of his white robe was stained with blood, but his left hand raised the shield without shaking. His right hand kept the golden spear aimed between Etenesh’s brows. His feet might be unsteady, but he was not.

Etenesh could see him getting wan. The burnout was starting to hit. He was running two talismans to her one. He was using powerful, brutal, direct spells. Expensive spells.

She chanted again, and a series of small darts flashed out of the tip of the flail’s reeds. They swirled through the air, making another tracery of copper light before exploding in a series of whip-cracks and bursts of light against the shield.

Alemu grunted and volleyed back, launching golden spike after golden spike at Etenesh. She dodged across the sand, her feathers dancing. The darts kept flickering out and exploding harmlessly on the shield. It seemed an impasse. But Alemu was starting to frown.

“Petty tricks, Te’mushd. The true sons of Siphios see you. Draining us. Stealing our essence and for what?” He barked, no longer bothering to attack.

Alemu dispelled the spear and swiftly chanted another spell. “To become a favored slave for the Tefen!?” Nine suns were born behind Alemu, each dreadful, each holy. “For God and the Crown!”

The suns spun behind Alemu, becoming a burning wheel. From that wheel came heat, pure and holy, intolerant of the mud and dung of the secular world. There would be no running from this. Only the area within the solar wheel was spared. Everything else within the Seraphim’s barrier would be cleansed.

Etenesh activated a charm in the spelled glass of her feathered crown. Holiness, like heat, was a measure of degree. The Treasuries of Light were in the very Palace of God.

Holiness? Even an initiate’s crown had the capital to spit on such petty solar sanctity. The crown surrounded Etenesh in a veil of dancing stars. Cooling her and brushing away the light.

“God despises you.” Etenesh rushed directly at Alemu. The veil shimmered and shook as the pressure of the solar ring crushed down, but it held. She was chanting, her left hand wreathed in ghostly white light as sigils drifted like snow behind her and melted into the scorching sands.

The copper flail lashed out again, this time cutting up from underneath the shield. Alemu snorted, extending his arm and keeping the shield well away from his body.

Etenesh didn’t miss the gap. She charged in, forcing the shield to the side with her flail as she smashed into Alemu. Her momentum drove them both to the ground. She tried to climb on top, but Alemu got his foot up and kicked her in the gut. She fell back, clutching at her stomach, trying to stop the fast bleeding from the freshly torn wound left by the cutting light earlier.

Alemu struggled to get up, the sands shifting under him. He couldn’t keep the suns up. The strain was too much. Etenesh’s starry veil winked out a bare second later. Alemu couldn’t raise off the shifting sands.

Etenesh focused on breathing. Breathe in, chant out. Reciting the ritual-creating spell she knew better than her mother’s voice. Pouring line after line into the sand. She staggered to her feet, growing stronger as she walked towards Alemu.

He saw her coming, Trying to get as much of his body as he could behind his shield. Slashes of light came from his wand, sharp and hot enough to cut metal like mud.

Etinesh flicked the burning light away like flies with her flail. There was a shimmer in the air around her. As though some great thing was hidden within her or just beyond the edge of what merely human eyes could perceive.

“God. You talk a lot about God. And say nothing of faith. You will die on your back, Alemu.” Etenesh launched herself towards the downed man, flail raised for a smashing blow.

He got his leg up, ready to kick her away once more. Just as she reached him, she stopped suddenly. His leg shot out, not quite reaching her. Outside the cover of the shield. Etenesh grabbed it with her left hand, fingers starting to turn into the talons of some great bird. With her right, she slashed down with her flail. The bright copper reeds cut off his leg at the knee.

There was a pause- a heartbeat long. Etenesh casually tossed the leg onto Alemu’s shield, just over his face. It was clear to the crowd that he didn’t understand what he was seeing at the moment. He didn’t understand what just happened. And when he did, he screamed.

The shield evaporated as he grabbed his bloody stump, trying to stop the blood. Etenesh didn’t waste a second. She stepped forward, her flail flashing bright under the true sun. First she took his other leg. Then his arms.

Her left hand, a talon now, avian, dripped traceries of spellwork into the dirt. With a little flick, a final glyph settled into place. Etenesh straddled the abbreviated Alemu, pressing him flat on his back, her hand resting over his heart.

“Look at me. LOOK AT ME!” She shouted. His eyes focused. He was bleeding out fast. She leaned in and whispered. “God has abandoned this world. So I will raise a new one up. The man you poisoned shall rule this world. Think on that as you burn forever in Hell. Or do you think your faithless cries to God will move him?”

She watched for his eyes to widen, understanding her. At that exact moment of realization, she plunged her talons into his chest and ripped out his heart.

The great formation she had been drawing the entire duel sprang into life. Three, then seven, then fourteen, then thirty-three tiers; layers after layers of light rose, forming compounding holy geometries, mysterious even to the wise in the crowd.

The sand rose up, forming an altar beneath the limbless Alemu. The spark of his soul, that speck of the divine in every human, was condensed in the cavity where his heart once beat.

Etenesh closed her eyes for a moment, praying not with words but with her sincerity. God may have abandoned them. She could count on him for nothing. But that was ok. God had abandoned the world, but Etenesh had not abandoned God.

She just needed to find someone to fill that role. She was God’s Wife, and her Husband would never leave her. She raised Alemu’s still-beating heart in her clawed hand above her perfect face. With a brutal clench, she crushed it, letting the blood anoint her.

Inside the remains of Alemu, the spark of his soul became mired in twisting, corrupted black smoke. Grease fires and pollution, and burning down another cigarette because the cancer couldn’t be treated anyhow.

The bright soul slowly sank towards the earth as the formation grew brighter and brighter. The structures of light grew more defined- flat roofed palaces, collonades, and processional paths. There were mysteries here, hidden in the forms and angles and shades of light. Enough to study for lifetimes.

As the formation became more defined, so too did the shimmering greatness around Etenesh. She grew even more perfect. Her skin smoothed. Her face and body were perfected to absolute symmetry. A blazing light, ruddy with outrage, lit the altar under Alemu as temple bells rang.

Four great wings extended from Etenesh’s back as Alemu’s soul sank into the sands. Sank into Hell. Brilliant, glorious wings of black and gold. She raised her bloodied, clawed hands to the sun and lifted her voice in a wordless song of worship.

The Seraphim dismissed the barrier around the pitch and joined its voice to hers. Theirs was a life of devotion. An often painful life. But they would choose no other.

Watching from the stands, Truth thought she had never looked more beautiful.